The Quest for Relevant Air Power

GERMAN Air Force │ 173
assets such as TBMD units, dedicated SEAD Tornados, and airlaunched
cruise missiles, the GAF aspires to gain visibility. 135
Moreover, the setting up of NATO’s Joint Air Power Competence
Centre was a GAF initiative. It was the German Air Staff that
identified the need for a common centre of excellence to provide
subject matter expertise on allied air power concepts and doctrine.
136 On 16 December 2002, these views were officially outlined.
Henceforth, Germany acted as the lead nation in setting up
the JAPCC, which became operational in early 2005 and basically
took over the infrastructure of the RFAS that was disbanded on 31
December 2004. 137
Bilateral and Multilateral Organisational Relationships. In
1995–96, a Franco-German airlift exchange system was created. 138
Such initiatives had already been motivated by the 1994 Defence
White Book that emphasised international cooperation in logistics
and training. Cooperation was expected both to reduce costs and
facilitate common standards and interoperability. 139 In the late
1990s, German defence minister Scharping particularly supported
the setting up of a common European airlift command to partially
remedy European shortcomings highlighted in the context of
NATO’s Defence Capabilities Initiative and the European Headline
Goal. 140 At the Franco-German summit in November 1999,
France and Germany declared their intention to transform their
cooperation in the field of military airlift into the European Air
Transport Command. The setting up of the EATC has been pursued
in an evolutionary way so far. An EAG airlift study laid the
foundation for the European Airlift Coordination Cell in Eindhoven,
Netherlands, which was further developed into the European Airlift
Centre. 141 Unlike other European states, for which transferring
national sovereignty into a multilateral framework is a more sensitive
issue, Germany would have been prepared to transfer national
authority in the field of airlift immediately and to set up
directly an independent EATC. 142
At the Tervuren Summit on 29 April 2003, Germany, France,
Belgium, and Luxembourg confirmed the EATC initiative. 143 Finally,
in May 2007, an agreement between Germany, France, Belgium,
and the Netherlands was signed to establish the EATC, and
in February 2010, the defence ministers of the four countries declared
that the multinational command, headed by a GAF major